Strong Liberty Sales Can't Help DaimlerChrysler's Bottom Line

DaimlerChrysler profits take a nosedive, but Liberty sales still strong.

From cnn.com:

Germany's DaimlerChrysler said on Thursday second-quarter profits slumped by almost two thirds, hit by a deep loss at its U.S. Chrysler arm, but the drop was not as bad as analysts had feared.

The world's fifth biggest carmaker, which issued a shock profit warning last month due to Chrysler's troubles, also said it still aimed to post an operating profit of about five billion euros for the full year.

The company, whose brands include Mercedes, Jeep, Dodge, Freightliner and Setra buses, said second-quarter operating profit dropped 62 percent to 641 million euros ($736 million) from a year ago.

Here's a link to the entire article. The article goes on to partly blame customer incentives for the drop in profits, including cash back on purchase and extremely low financing options.

At least this Forbes.com article is saying that the Liberty is still selling well.

In a completely unrelated story, we saw this cool article about the company that DaimlerChrysler hired to help setup and run Camp Jeep a few weeks ago in Charlottesville, Virginia. Among the interesting facts in the article are the fact that they brought in 7 million tons of rocks to make roads and 120 tents!